Elected leadership requires vision. That is, one should be able to be ahead of the curve. One should be able to see what we need and lead us to that goal. He should lead one’s colleagues to uncharted courses. I have demonstrated my keen sense of vision over the years—and I have been right. I have been a longtime advocate for commercial office development. For over 15 years, I have said that we should get private industry, and state, and federal agencies to lease office space in Prince George’s County. In so doing, we would not lose the over 265,000 county residents who leave the county to go to work each day. When we lose 1/3 of our population, we lose our tax base, educated work force, and disposable cash to surrounding jurisdictions.
Almost single handedly I have been a lone voice crying out for increasing our tax base and job creation by commercial office development. By having a robust commercial office market, we can create thousands of jobs, work where we live, not have to commute out of the county to work, and attract people to work here and spend their money here. In so doing, we will have an increased tax base, more money to pay our police, fire, EMS workers, school teachers and administrators, and more money to build schools and improve county services. Our current and previous leaders have failed to understand and join in to my vision. They have limited our economic prospects to residential development. Now that the housing market is dying and on life support, they now see and agree with what I have been advocating for 15 years. Now, county employees are being furloughed, laid off, fired, having hours reduced, and county services are being cut.
Humbly, I can say that I had the vision to see that Prince George’s County residents should not be required to commute to Washington, D.C, Arlington, Baltimore, Alexandria, and Fairfax, Montgomery, and Howard Counties to work. Elected leaders belatedly, now are joining with me in the fight for federal agencies, state agencies, and private enterprise to locate in the county and lease office space here.
VISION IS ESSENTIAL!
- Education – Support education initiatives that always put children first by preparing them to be college and career ready.
- Jobs & Economy – Continue to encourage
businesses to locate in our County. Support
pre-apprenticeship training programs for our children. We need jobs for our people. - Public Safety – Make sure our public safety
workers have the resources and equipment to keep District 6 residents and businesses safe. - Housing Foreclosure – Work with banking
industry and governmental entities to address
the mortgage foreclosure crisis in District 6. - Healthcare – Support a new hospital in our County and development and implementation of a countywide health system plan that addresses the quality of healthcare in our communities.
